Nonviolent Discipline: Movements Facing Repression

[00:00:00]good morning good afternoon good evening everyone around the world and welcome to what we expect to be a lively and interactive discussion on how movements maintain resilience and momentum in the face of repression my name is Maria Stefan and I direct the program on nonviolent action at the u.s. Institute of Peace and I will be moderating today's event we are grateful to have a terrific lineup of scholars and activists joining us from various parts of the world to provide insight on this timely and important topic and of course we will be taking questions from our global online audience throughout the event so please feel free to comment and put questions into the chat box just a bit about US IP the u.s.

[00:00:53]Institute of Peace is a nonpartisan independent institution that works with local partners experts and practitioners to help prevent and resolve violent conflict in different parts of the world our program on nonviolent action focuses on the role of civil resistance and people power movements in advancing just and sustainable peace our team conducts Applied Research supports education and training and strategic nonviolent action and movement building and seeks to amplify grassroots voices in national and global policy fora today's event is inspired by a couple of countervailing trends in the international community on the one hand authoritarianism is resurgent and democracy is taking a hit around the world with declines in global political rights and civil liberties for the past 13 years on the other hand we are witnessing a veritable explosion of activism and people power movements globally from latin america to hong kong to sudan in algeria people are taking to the streets and engaging in nonviolent direct action in unprecedented numbers in all those places activists have faced various forms of state and non state repression ranging from cyber attacks to police brutality to attacks by government backed paramilitary forces often governments will deploy a jean provocateurs to foment protester violence and an attempt to delegitimize movements how have movements responded to these forms of repression what strategic and tactical decisions have they made to maintain resilience and momentum what are the lessons from research and past cases that could inform current movements to answer these questions and many more from you all in our facebook live audience I now turn to our virtual panel of speakers I will briefly introduce them and they will then kick off our conversation and then I would encourage you to not be shy about adding questions and comments as we go forward with a conversation so first we will be hearing from Johnson Young who is a Hong Kong human rights activist and advocate and activist who works on issues related to freedom of assembly and expression and protection for for human rights defenders he chairs the board of the Hong Kong Hong Kong civil club which produces briefings on shrinking civic space and build solidarity with international rule of law and human rights communities we will be hearing from Xia Busan Xia is a Tunisian activist for democracy and human rights he works as a researcher covering governance public policy and human rights for a research center called Pandora Xia also works as a trainer focusing on these same topics for Tunisia and Libyan and Moroccan associations as as al shami has more than 15 years of experience in public diplomacy policy research and advocacy she focuses on Africa in the Middle East with a particular focus on Sudan in the Gulf she is also an expert trainer on nonviolent resistance citizen journalism and peacebuilding Yvonne Marivic is a leading practitioner in the field of strategic civil resister he serves as director of global training and movement support for the organization rise he previously was an active member of the youth LED pro-democracy movement in Serbia and has worked with dozens of activists and movements globally Victoria Hui is an associate press professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame her research examines the centrality of war in the formation and transformation of China throughout history she writes and comments frequently on Hong Kong politics for various media outlets and finally Jonathan Pinckney is a program officer for u.s. ip's program on nonviolent action previously he was a post doctoral research fellow in the Department of Sociology and political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology his research examines extra institutional political contention in non democracies with a focus on nonviolent civil resistance so Johnson we are going to kick off the discussion with you you have been part of the recent round of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong that were initially triggered by the Hong Kong government's imposition of the extradition bill which has since been shelved the demonstrations have attracted mass participation and the Hong Kong government and police have been accused of excessive use of force at the same time there has been an increase in the use of violent tactics by protesters however as we saw most recently pro-democracy legislators recently won a landslide in the district council elections so I wanted to start by asking you how you would assess the state of the democracy movement in Hong Kong and how is it dealing with repression Thank You Maria and thank you for having me in these discussions it's really amazing so yeah Hong Kong is - in the mix of unrest and the posttest movement has continued for six months since June and there's no sign that it will soon fall off so the movement right now is still retaining a strong support from the population that more than eighty four percent of the population demand and independent inquiry into police brutality which is a major demands of Hotez and but on the other hand yet engines about the poll democracy can win landslides in the previous local election will that defer the energies of protest movement into institutional buildings or formal politics I I think it is not that simple the so answer for that is no because the District Council is mandated to govern neighborhood duties like garbage collections and traffic contractions so what democracy can gain from this wing is resources because each district consolers will get roughly seven hundred thousands u.s. deeds allowance and on all the realms and this will provide material resources for organizers to build our on below and the men's I win also energized a movement because it proved that many of the amount of populations are supporting the demands of the protest a lot of candidate who was wondering for this direction they were using the protest demand as their major election platform now I think the problem that Hong Kong people is facing now is Beijing is unwilling to make concessions and they are going to continue to back the administration's of Hong Kong so the future in a sense it looks quite gloomy and the protesters has although they have successfully disrupt the immunization the Hong Kong government is losing allies whole government parties and business units is keeping their distance from Carolyn but so if if City scenario happens in other nation state then the precedents properly beside and substantial reform will be beat but Hong Kong is not a nation state nor is new enemy aka Chinese communist regime is is is is being besieged or challenged in its own territory so this is what we are the situation that we are facing now I'm still faint I still believe that Beijing is going to tighten its grip by taking control or heavily influenced into institutions like at the genious like VBA outlets or schools so the future is a little bit gloomy now you mentioned a little bit about the violence the escalating violence and use of force by the Contessa and I would I would like to adjust this point which is why the homo testers are escalating the use of force and not relying solely on nonviolent tactics that is because a lot of peaceful means are exhausted a lot of legitimate channels to channel the grievances of the people have already been shut down Hong Kong people is facing now is torture and the detention arbitrary arrest and the Hong Kong government is also recognizing its law against is people like imposing de-facto curfew or the mass ban that was imported in October so that's part of the reason why some people we solve to thousands and sometimes using using force from the protest it does have some utility so you know what for example it does stop some of the police from harassing people and torture people afterward it does galvanize some of the popular support because people feel they are fighting back and there's hope in this fight but what we are really trying to defend in here is Hong Kong becoming a movement that Seoul only relies on militant measures and I think this is like s organizers or as academia that's something we need to really research and look into that is how a mixed strategy can cooperate and collaborate with each other so we can get there that the most of it Thank You Johnson then we'll talk a little bit a little bit later about what the research suggests about the mixing of violent and nonviolent tactics because it's not it's not evident let's say that it always helps a movement but we'll hear from Jonathan about that point but let me bring in Victoria Victoria Hui as someone who's in about the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement from the umbrella movement in 2014 to the current round of protests what would you say are the greatest strengths of the movement right now and what are the biggest challenges that lie ahead essentially I would say that the best train starts this movements has are the kind of the key words unity commitment broad-based support and international support at the same time though I would say that these are also the reasons they also have become the tiredness for Beijing's crackdown so think about you know mass protest Hong Kong for a long time for decades is very famous for the massive protest Hong Kong has 7.5 million population and then you can see 1 million 2 million people protesting and so you've given your research and your your research America's that you show that if you have three point five percent of the population I'll organize a railing around a particular cause usually achieve success the Hong Kong repeatedly goes way beyond its true 3.5 threshold so then what's the poem doing is to you because not only you have to have and in no objection permits from the police you know that you have lawful assemblies and by denying that permits to be organizers then any assembly becomes unlawful subject to police use of force another thing is that Hong Kong people are also very very artistic and they have done all kinds of art work you know that you support the protest they have been lemon laws essentially democracy walls there's they're also human chains and so these activities are subject you the same kind of unlawful assemblies and not just that not just that you know if you gather without a permit you can be arrested but also because they've been thugs who are around with knives to attack young people who are trying to put up posters and post-it notes or to try to protect the walls another strength is commitment so commitment meaning that these days the young people are really willing to just sacrifice everything they're fighting the last stand and then during the umbrella movements people would actually train themselves aimed at the police stations and because in a faith that the judicial system is going to you know if I'm if I have broken any law I'm willing to take the consequences but this time it seems that the police understand that that if they take people to the courts that many of them would be released and so they need the people I call this a capacitation campaign and they are doing so with impunity they pay the people when they arrest them and they also piece them up more torture them up more in detention centers so then they it would take them you know for entire entire decade probably to even recover some of them actually suffer from disabilities as a result and you can also hear from some top politicians that we just basically have lost interest in the entire young generation so it's kind of this really concerted efforts to wipe out the young people now another strength is the broad base of society to support and that then has invited kind of essentially aging has been using a whole society crackdown so civil servants are behind this and any civil servants who are arrested whether or not they're doing anything on the street if they happen to be even just bided by put aside if they arrested they gets dismissed can say Pacific many crew members join they strike on August 5th they got fired and their universities and students and secondary schools and now targets of repression so I would say that another thing that seems to be you saw in other cases in South Africa for example consumer boycotts are a very effective but in Hong Kong we're dealing with China and they have so much money they have so much economic power so NPA one guy made a tweet system without call and then the NPA would be banned in China and so this goes back to I think to you know that you maintain with so is the best thing that I've seen that's going to allow people to do that is still talking to boycotts but in a sense of identifying the pro-democracy businesses improve democracy young people connecting each other they are absolute that that business business is doing that so that would be them the best way and even but when it comes to elections so with the district council elections that happen on November 24th the pro-democracy the councillors the candidates could win because this the election was based on first-past-the-post but with the Legislative Council election next time it's going to be based on proportional representation and it is designed to keep to democracy councillors in perpetual minority so these are a lot of the challenges Thank You Victoria so I wanted to bring in Azaz al shami who's been very actively involved in the pro-democracy movement in Sudan we were just noting before we went live that it's almost at the one-year anniversary of the mass protests in Sudan that culminated in the ouster of Omar Bashir longtime dictator who was accused of war crimes so this was a case of a popular movement going against an accused genocide air if you will so I wanted to just ask as I as we heard that you know from Johnson and we hear from activists often in some of the most difficult and repressive context around the world that we've we've tried everything we've exhausted all of our nonviolent options so there's only one thing left and that's violence so I just wanted to get your sense thinking about the Sudanese popular movement of how do you explain how this movement was able to stand down and face a regime accused of war crimes and prevailed sure Thank You Nora and yes thank you for hosting us and for so for the revolution that took place in in December 2018 it actually rightly so it started by a small protest in a school in on the 13th in the demoscene but the revolution did not only start in 2018 it has been an accumulative movement that started as early as 2005 when I did some research about the first act of defense of public protests or Sitton or picketing it actually it goes back to 2005 and ever since a lot of interest group and a lot of movements in Sudan have been working internally but a little bit Antonio they were not interconnected and I think what happened in 2018 in December it was it was an opportune moment where all these movements that have been working together met with a leadership that was actually almost by coincidence which is the nice professional association and and throughout these years since 2005 until 2018 all these movement or groups or interest groups where has Venus's they tried that institutional path by trying to negotiate with the government trying to have petitions or a representation or something like that and they all felt like it was going to fail or they didn't it didn't bring fruit so they started to go against the government and as you noted the new government is notorious and it has a very dark track record when it comes to human rights and human rights violation but I would say that what the whatever these movements are these moving parts that made of that makes the Sudanese diverse resolution has two characteristics that made it successful one is something internal that is characteristic to the movement itself and another is external that that's something outside of it the internal thing is the core model most of them were strong grassroots organization and by grassroots that what made it very integral and important and critical to this movement is that it was not a meatus it was not central you would find stakeholders across the country from different socioeconomic backgrounds with different grievances people who already had tried their own tactics in their own struggle now coming together for something beyond their small groups and the other thing about the italics the characters of the movement it was the inclusiveness by inclusiveness III mean at all level like as gender wise age wise social economic racial Geographic you would have like mass marshes in the very small town that's called outlets in Malad about which a lot of people might not even be able to point it on a map that can be similar and exchanged to that you would find able to then or consume so this inclusiveness and this mass scale made it also successful it became inevitable for people not to join and also they were very persistent and maybe we can talk later about the freshen from the seats that varied from arresting to torture to people agent dying in government facility and then mounting up to this big massacre that took place on June 3rd and again in the face of all of the suppression and aggression that people were in persistent as a persistency was not something that a superhuman what they did they did something very smart by preserving their their energy and having a schedule revolutionary schedule as you well said where they they streamlined and organized their act tactics and and how they do it and and and rationed their energy and the third internal aspect into leadership the leadership in this movement specifically now in this revolution was today's professional association that actually our history was like the leads of the artists are telling people the theme telling people were to go telling people with days to do what what days to mobilize and that was very central in a sense that the the guidelines are central but at the same time move that the components of the movement across the country have their own agency to execute that plan so it was central in the guidance sense but at the same time it was decentralized enough for people to have a room and really way for them to through their own and also the meaning by non-violence that was a very big challenge so a lot of people and and and it was really interesting to see how the movement remained violence not only just added logical choice that this is minimizes my loss but it was also part of the future of how they see this country that it belongs to them and they needs to preserve it and they need to make sure that its impact once they went so almost like being flow and believe in convection that this war of this vile a battle who will enter their favor and they don't want to have a lot of damage that could hinder their part that the other component that means it's moving successful was external health as I can be seen in the death forest support Venus has a bit desperate around the world and they were very integral and helpful and and supportive of this movement in many ways when it comes to fundraising when it comes to advocacy when it comes to bringing the attention to the situation so that when it comes to documentation and also I think we're very integral when it came to amplify the message when the country was under siege by the Internet's shutdown that took place almost like thirty five days after the massacre on June 3rd so I feel like it was all these interlocking flocks about the core of the movements being central being very being very grassroots so being very close to the people of the stakeholders and being very exclusive he and geographically spread and not elitist or centralized and also the support that they get from outside from the nice people themselves who were like almost like ambassadors or to reflect that the movement stages and struggle and challenges thank you as as I was that was really interesting and I thought it was interesting choice of words that you preserved your energy in the movement and kind of in order to sustain over the longer term in the interest of mixing activism and scholarship I wanted to now turn to Jonathan Pinkney Jonathan you've researched the dynamics of civil resistance campaigns and recently published a special report with the International Center on nonviolent conflict on making or breaking nonviolent discipline in nonviolent movements and while I personally can't imagine any movement particularly one facing a repressive opponent that could ever be perfectly nonviolent what does the literature the growing body of literature I might add suggest about the results of movements using violence even unarmed forms of violence thanks Maria yeah I'm this is an incredibly crucial question because exactly as you brought up it's very rare to see a movement particularly a movement that is based significant amounts of violent repression from the state that remains entirely nonviolent but this means of course that it's very difficult to analyze these things had a movement level from the scholarly perspective because sort of small degrees of incidental violence often accompany almost every movement so it's difficult to tease these things apart so most of the work that's been there are scholars who argue on the one hand that even small levels of violence tend to undermine a movements chances of success others who argue that some kind of violence particularly violence without the use of arms can be beneficial and others who argue that there isn't really much much difference of one way or the other and so on a macro level it's difficult to say things with a high degree of certainty but I think there are there are three specific points on this that I think we do have a lot of information about a lot of good studies have been done and I think helped us to get into this a little bit more detail and the first is that non violent events tend to lead to short-term government concessions at a much higher rate than violent events so we're not talking about sort of the overall success of the movement but just in terms of the government making some kind of success of concessions some kind of short term gain for the movement this tends to happen most frequently in response to non violent events rather than violent events and so this means that it can be if a movement is dominated by violent events it can be a lot harder to build that most gradual momentum over time that can maintain the energy like as oz was talking about and ultimately lead to a longer term success so fewer concessions in in violent invite response to violent events second and sort of in kind of the inverse violent events are much more likely to face extreme levels of government repression relative to non-violence and we see this across you know many many different contexts whether that's in dictatorships democracies anywhere and of course this can be one of the major factors that saps a movement strength undermines its resilience and prevents people from sort of maintaining maintaining a commitment to the movement over the long term now if a movement is particularly large or is facing a weak opponent then these higher levels of repression may not you know may not be particularly important in affecting the movements overall chances of success but if a movement is facing a particularly strong state then these this impact on resilience is likely to be particularly crucial and then third we know from many many different studies across many different contexts that on average the use of violence by an opposition movement tends to undermine of people's external support for it and increase the degree to which external observers view government repression as justified and understandable so this has mostly been done by scholars doing sort of different kinds of survey experiments or this kind of work my own work have recently completed a study where we surveyed five thousand people across 33 countries found that when we depicted a movement as being violently repressed by the government peaceful movement that significantly decreased whether people said the government had justice on its side but if we changed it and said the great the government is gauging in the same kind of repression but of a violent movement that increased the amount of to which people said the government was justified more so than it was decreased when the moving was peaceful so this can have a really significant effect in in undermining people's support for a firm movement and increasing the degree to which people view the government's actions is justified and this isn't necessarily a hundred percent of the time some violence and a movement of course doesn't mean that it's doomed to failure not at all particularly if this violence is perceived if violence by movement is perceived as proportionate relative to extreme levels of of government repression but it certainly comes with these particular challenges thanks Jonathan I wanted to just see before we talk with zeod if either victoria or johnson had any particular questions for for jonathan before we move on I think Jonathan has make a very good point about the complexities of violence rather you know in in some of the contests which which is something that I also witnessed in Hong Kong that is you know the violence of the professor has to be proportionate and it has to be justified it has to be fed by a reasoning and if the interesting fact about the use of force of Hong Kong protests there are several characteristics of it one it is proportionate to the police crackdown so you know usually the police and the military police they use are very high levels of force while the protesser were only foreign breaks so wielding thousands against the fact jobs of Hong Kong society the use of force from the professor it's not that serious and I think this is part of the reason why it is a news popular support and the second characteristics is those violence are very targeted to the government or the Cooney's of the government so we see some feminism's of MTR surfaces and some businesses we also see thousands against the police but part of the reason why a protest movement maintain support is because they are very targeted so what we according to the public survey done by independent second being here more than 60% of the Hong Kong populations said it is justifiable and they can understand why protests will use radical measures when the government is not responding in a movement and I think this explains why populism for being proportionate it's something that every stakeholders in a movement has to keep in mind mm-hmm thanks Johnson I wanted to just you know Jonathan have in mind maybe kind of some additional insights from the research but I wanted to bring in Ziad from Tunisia you know Tunisia is an interesting case where it was the first of the Arab Spring uprisings the Jasmine Revolution which resulted in the departure of another dictator Ben Ali and it was a case where the same groups that were leading the civil resistance ended up being the lead negotiators for the the pathway to democracy and negotiating the the democratic transition and so you know and at the same time the activists were facing a lot of you know government violence police brutality and a lot of the current activism in in Tunisia today is still focused on these very issues of security force accountability and and police violence so I wanted to just ask the add kind of what have you observed about how movements in Tunisia can best and most effectively engage with security forces thank you hi everyone first so yes we it's almost 10 years now since the revolution 9 years exactly but now he is dead and I'm happy to bring up some memories from 2010 when the protests started in December 2010 it started first as you may know outside of the capital city all the dictatorship of bonanni was built on a strong administration especially on a central level so everything started outside of Tunis my capital city and then this was the last one let's say to move if I may say that on the first protests we did in the streets of Tunis nothing was really coordinated when we saw on the other hand that police special forces and even anti-terrorist forces were deployed in the streets to counter as common citizens we decided to organize ourselves so it's our way of organizing ourselves let's say was based on three ideas the first one was that the ideal thing is to hide behind institutions let me explain before 2011 we didn't really have any civil society since only five or six organizations and the idea was to push these organizations like the Tunisian Human Rights League or the usual usual today the main Union in workers union in Tunisia to push them to take a position and support the movement and once rigidity or human rights defenders Association agreed to do that we had a kind of a legal umbrella under which we could go in the streets otherwise we would have faced much brutal much more brutal the second thing is we used what we had under our hands social media so many Tunisians especially especially young ones were already using Facebook and Twitter the the getting an account or connecting to social media was very hard at that time because for example before 2011 we didn't in Tunisia have access to YouTube for example we didn't have access to many other social media but we had Facebook and we used for Facebook to keep each other informed about what was happening especially outside of Judas because it was very hard between let's say at the end of December 2010 and and the 14th of January it was very hard to move outside of the capital city it was very hard to get insights from what was happening so we used Facebook and Twitter to organize ourselves the third thing is even if we never actually theorized what we did in 2011 we used what we call in our big destruct and divide so let's say I was many times in 2011 within the Faculty of Law in Tunis and we had 300 between 300 and 500 people ready to go downtown to protest and we knew that if we moved all of us at the same time it would be easier for police to be violent with us so we divided ourselves in groups of 10 15 20 people we managed to deploy ourselves in many streets of the city which imposed on police forces also to divide itself into smaller groups and we found out that it was much better how much easier for us to do that than to go all of us all together at the same time on Bourguiba which is the main Main Street so these were the three main ways we use to organize ourselves but there were also if I may add factors let's say I would say random factors because no one really thought about that but it happened anyways the first factor is the extent to which the crowds during the protest was diversified you had obviously adult men and adult women but also students and Benari we used this as a joke when Annie made one of his biggest mistakes a week before in the country by closing down all the universities in his mind it was a way to stop students from protesting but actually it helped a lot of movement because students were free to you go and support the students but we had also and early enter people all the people in the crowds and children brought up by their parents I know some might think it's a kind of non responsible but we think if the contrary the police was facing a crowd of thousands of people and not only adult men women children elderly and that made made it much more complicated for them to use violence and at some point they finally used it on January 14th but it was too late I may raise just one point for the debate we can talk about it later which is impunity I think it's a very important thing in nowadays in Tunisia police is not using repression in law during protests but police is still doing harm to protesters within detention centres within prisons I know Victoria mentioned this point and now we changed our mindset or our planification from how to do on the street to how to do after the protests once people are in custody how to protect them and how to react to philosophize it's within detention that's really interesting thanks Ziad and I finally wanted to turn with Yvonne Marivic Yvonne you were a student leader during the the pro-democracy movement in Serbia and faced no shortage of violence and repression and have since worked with activists and movements in various countries around the world what can you say building on the conversation up to this point what can you say about the strategies and the tactics that movements have used to maintain momentum in the face of repression and what are the common pitfalls that they've experienced thanks Maria so although I have to say my experiences from the previous century so it may be a bit dated but there are something that are kind of remained the same and I think like your question you you kind of put the seeds of an answer actually the point of reacting to repression is actually to maintain mobilization levels and momentum that the moving head because we have to ask ourselves why not just like why regime's use repression but if repression is so good for the regime's one they're using it all the time and the reason why they're not using it all the time is it's too costly so the way regime's use repression is that if they see an urgent need to quash a movement or to or to kind of prevent certain kind of behavior by the people they're going to use repression hoping that this behavior is going to stop and that the movement is going to either fall apart or they're gonna like withdraw or they're going to make a mistake or something like that but if the movement manages to keep on going despite the refresh and usually the repression starts falling apart because it's just too costly and and it's costly both in terms of resources and in terms of morale of the of the forces that need to enforce that with virtue because they need to be convinced they need they need to do things that are pretty much extraordinary so what one of the things that movements successfully do and this is something that we did back in Serbia and I also encountered other movements who were doing that was to have like a combination of tactics of concentration followed by the tactics of dispersion so if you have a people all protesting and you know we kind of assume that protest is probably kind of the most talked about the most reported on tactic that that that movements use to have people protesting in the streets and all coalescing in the big towns or a capital city or whatever it is and then they're faced with a crackdown some movements try to do it again and and and and usually they're faced with a like formidable opponent but in some cases including what we did in Serbia was we actually instead of tactics of concentration we opted for tactics of dispersion so we would do simultaneously smaller gatherings in smaller actions in dozens of towns across the country that put the regime in a really awkward position because they had only few loyal and and fierce and well-equipped and well-trained forces those special forces that could easily deal with us but if the protests are happening and the actions are happening across the country at the same time they had to rely on local forces because they had to deal with them simultaneously and Wednesday was they had to rely on local forces the local forces had were not as good and also they had like local loyalties because they were coming from those towns in those cities so they were not as brutal in this repression so that was for instance one of the one of the things that that that that that was pretty successful strategy and I think it can be universal because the logic behind it is actually not country specific cultural specific or even time specific notice like this is a tactic from a 20th century let's say that can be easily replicated in the 21st mmm-hmm great thank you very much Yvonne that's very interesting on the on the strategic value of all turning between methods of concentration and dispersion I wanted to now turn to our our global audience and take a question from Seif Ahmed Al honey who asks Victoria question Victoria do you think a severe challenge is the unpredictable violent tactics that authorities take against the movement and he goes on to say that I see the youth element as being a critical component in fuelling the nonviolent approach Viktoria hold on we're just going to take you off mute the Hong Kong case and other cases because for in the rest of the world usually you people have lived under dictatorship repression for quite a long time what has happened with the Hong Kong police is that for many years we will be saying hi fight to the police forces they were the most professional across Asia so this is why even five years ago during the umbrella movements people would turn themselves in surrender themselves never expecting to be beaten up or torture but now this is why I say that it is really against the determination of the entire young generation and it's also click precisely because there are these different colors of freedom especially the roof law and therefore the police have been using very very extreme violence completely unexpected and at the same time though we are also going back to what Jonathan was saying is that it we are dealing with a high capacity ratio in Hong Kong and the police force they are very well disciplined very well trained and so far that Beijing has not sent out to be the PLA the People's Liberation Army because they think that they can really rely on the local police forces so in this case we're dealing with a very high capacity regime that's willing to do whatever it takes to crack down on the people and the people are also very very mobilized also if we are we are talking about a high capacity so society because Hong Kong for many many decades has always enjoyed freedoms this is why we have this confrontation very very brutal crackdown turn to violence but the same time also very sustained international local support it's this true that the trend of violence has caused a little bit of that but still we especially even descendants is actually went to Hong Kong and say hey guys can you return to non-violence but still the Senate the house they've all passed the human rights and democracy Act and then even European countries that do it's kind of looking at the same model as well so this is kind of my take and I mean part of life's question was also the unpredictable nature of the violence and you know one aspect of the situation actually and in most of your cases was the role of non-state actors so paramilitary groups and I'm curious how you have thought strategically about how to respond to whether it's triads or whether it was kind of paramilitary groups whether it was you know you know in Sudan kind of the non-traditional armed groups who were using violence against protesters so how do you think strategically about responding to these actors yeah I think this is a very good question for a lot of Hong Kong people this is something that they haven't really thought about and also that I was just writing a piece the use of fuckabish violence is really to incite the whole point is to incite vigilante justice and so now in the international media reports that we see these horrifying scenes of protesters beating up others that's actually I think it's it's being costly to the movement and also when protesters they have themselves from Molotov cocktails and also that because they they mask themselves they also address in black this then has actually I think the most horrifying is the worst destructions are done by agent provocateurs now Hong Kong people because Hong Kong people glued to the TV grew to all the videos so they know who did what but the international media the international observers really cannot tell so there'll be huge vandalism of train stations III think that I can actually really I we have enough evidence to show that they're not done by protesters but again for the international audience that's really impossible to tell yeah other responses to the idea of paramilitaries Johnson I think you have a response yeah my my response is small on you know my questions to other movement experienced because the very reason why Hong Kong people are assigned to what we're trying to gear up and escalate the use of force is because in nature mind there was paramilitary there were higher hired by the government were attacking people in the TradeStation indiscriminantly and it really in framing people and I think this is part of the dissing Ariel would always be a candidate by organizers or activists or even ordinary citizens in a movement because when people were facing the police you can say okay they are the government so we don't want to fall into the trap or we don't want to be getting more powders from them but when people are facing paramilitary or an estate etta it's really easy and makes sense to for the protesters to gear and to fight that so they can reduce further harm in the future so I would like to hear other movement experienced too ivana resolves do you have thoughts on that so I think like you know I'm gonna bring another example from the from the twentieth century we have to deal with a similar problem so the first time we saw this happening was in Romania in the early 90s when young melee ESCO was faced with the wave of protests in Bucharest mostly led by students he organized secretly what used to be called the miners Olympics which means he organized miners to come down into the city and organize clashes with with the students so they started beating up students and then the police had to step in just to kind of maintain order there are two sides we have to kind of maintain order but it actually completely turned the dynamic from students against the regime into like two groups of people fighting and then how can you be against the miners miners are risking their life every day going into the mines so that was there so Malaysia which tried the same thing with what we call the counter rally in 1996 we were organizing demonstrations against him and he organized counter demonstrations like people spontaneously gathering to support the government the whole idea was to organize incidents that they're going to lead to to the clearing of the state of war so they even had like guns were used they were shooting at protesters but unarmed civilian not unarmed but and uniformed civilians that were armed and that were that were organizing these active Islands so what it was really difficult for us and we had to maintain like complete separation we try to kind of deescalate as much as we could to prevent and to kind of build a very strong media narrative what is going on but still to come back the next day after the counter rally happened and to reclaim the streets because the whole idea was to prevent this narrative of two sides Simmons of the civilians trying to fight and then the army stepping in or the police that begin because that's a trick actually it wasn't really genuine it was actually all employed by the by the regime that's a really interesting today pleases us yeah so in Sudan in the recent context there are two ways in which the government tried to manipulate the situation by having their own plan one was doing a counter rally of course using slogan that its opposite to what the people were using for instance the people were using the governments must go and counter rally was using this doesn't us know you must say and they gather their own people and their supporters and they took took over one of the public spaces the other one was a little bit more controversial and more tricky during the sittin where the protesters took over a street next to the general commandos military assume as a sit-ins from the April 7th until June 3rd that was a very popular place and that was like a litany to TFP well and what the government did used an adjacent area next to it called Columbia that it's known to be a hub for recreational drugs and what the government said and they used that pretext as that area as a pretext for the aggression and the excessive use of violence and it was really interesting because it created this rift within the movement itself and the people in general in the general public who were like oh we don't approve rational drug and we're not going to accept that this is not our this is not our code of conduct this is not our ethics and at the thing Tom's a younger generation noticing what the government is trying to do and saying no a Columbia is part of the resolution the people who are there or mostly are people who are homeless or with that or come from very underprivileged economic backgrounds there are victims they are a system as we are and they are this is citizen citizens and they should not be neglected and and and it was sad enough that that area has been taken as the pretext for the use excessive use of violence on the June 3rd because the government until recently their narrative is like we tried to disperse Columbia which was a drug hub but who did not want it to do anything with a sit-in so it was quite interesting and I think that was it was also a learning occurred for the movement itself about accepting people and and the social economic divide that a lot of people didn't look beyond just being poor but they didn't that was like like for them to see the choices that people understood the sometimes are left with and how they can live and what their choices are but it did succeed unfortunately in minimizing the support for the people who live in that area and as a result many of them might not get justice for their killing or what they have faith hmm Thanks as US I wanted to take two questions that are related the first one from CJ Medina I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly Sega asks what has been the role of women as movement creators and then the related question from Madison is about the gender breakdown of each of your movements and her question specifically is do women frame their grievances differently or our women's issues adopted in the overall movement agenda somebody want to take a stab on that as as I know you had some reflections on women's roles in Sudan do you want to take that or let somebody else yeah sure I would I would say that I was just recently into that and I had the honor to work with more than 60 women who were part of the resolution and it was really remarkable but like I know they are part of the resolution but when you look at the at the ways and and and and their engagement is just astonishing they were not just showing up in mass numbers it was way beyond that many women who were not necessarily political activists or necessarily like your average activist were really involved in the end of mobilization they were involved in getting people his message getting messages to people who are hard to reach they were also very engaged in the when it comes to to the organization of events for instance doing the logistics making sure who's who and who is where getting permission for a lot of the projects especially the younger ones that was a very important part because we are communal a society a lot of people like it really matters to them the validation of their family and and what their family says especially for women younger generation and a lot of women were actually asking their girls to show up they were asking their dog go and even those who could come from more restrictive environment they were trying to provide help in another way like for instance doing their social media campaigns making sure that they're posting the photos making sure that as a message is getting across doing the logistics for the underground groups together and all that and that was not only just in urban settings that was even in in areas that are remote where women participation in politics is not really per sneaked at something okay or accepted by the society and at the same time even in IDP camp where internally state space people most of the mover movement leaders and the grassroots leaders were actually women and also the other rule that a lot of people don't realize is keeping this movement peaceful and nonviolent that was actually most of it put on the shoulder of women because they were the one who are trying to promote the essence of peacefulness trying to remind the men because we have this culture where women in the war culture they are usually the one who instigate men to go and and take revenge on all that we actually reverse that and they became the one who are calling for non-violence reminding men that the stream is not about just music violence it's not about being irrational and angry is actually about to you wise so they they were in several leaders of this movement in waves and and means that they were not the usual way but it was the best way possible for them to do so given the culture and the structure of the of the of the society there one last thing is like deer and visitant that that NASA's for almost two months and a half the the core the bees are the one who were doing the heavy lifting of the logistics were actually women for a lot of people sustained there 24/7 and remained but during the Satan it required a lot of other women who are at home to take take the responsibility of those who are guarding the Satan and that was also done by women providing the shoes providing the logistics providing even protection providing the sense of family and community meal atmosphere it was put on woman a woman doctors were mainly remarkably seen and assistant so if they were everywhere sadly though when he came to the political process and we came to the after the the negotiation part and and that women were not as as recognized and they were like almost Souls okay thank you we got it from here and this is a new struggle now for women in Sudan they're trying to take their space and turf their space and while Oakland can satiate their own differences within them and there's a new women movement emerging from Sudan and it's very the process are very promising despite the setback of the challenges but it's very promising and and this new Sudanese woman now there are like 10 times longer than they were before the imagine how strong they are now thanks as any other thoughts on the kind of the gendered aspects of you of the movements yeah so in Hong Kong the same two we see same phenomenons that more women are taking upon men and rows and organizing row and they have do a very good job in using their role in the movement so for example after the students break into the legislature building a lot of mothers ho a zombie and they were trying to subvert the narratives of student vandalizing buildings into something like the students were desperate and as mother as parents you have to understand them so we see you know more women's are taking up to upon madam rose in the movement but at the same time I would like to emphasize is having women's to take up prominent role doesn't mean that we will achieve gender equality in to the movement right because as for gender equality we also need to respect the feminine energies of women's and their specific ways of engagement into social movement and I would say in a Hong Kong contest in the Hong Kong movement we still have yet to respect that kind of fit amenity and this is kind of related to the questions on Fowler's part of the reason why some women's will be excluded from the front line is because you know they faced huge violence and often time women's are seen as less skillful in fighting the police so sometimes they would face discrimination or they would be looked down upon if they were trying to be at the front line and at the same time because there is this because the use of force is has become one of the main tactics in the protest it also discouraged some of the facilitation of women because you know again structurally women's as seen as a weakest check in I think the police so this polish to the questions of you know if we really want to increase everyone if we want to include a we want to have a movement this inclusive so what kind of tactics or what kind of mix the tactics should be used and how should we be flat how should we alter our tactics will be something that all of us have to learn now thanks Johnson that's really interesting and I think that's one of the kind of the research findings about the introduction of violent tactics is that it tends to on average reduce active participation and if that's a primary strategic interest to increase participation and certainly to increase participation of women that's where kind of the introduction of violence can be can be problematic and you know it only generally in in in these struggles it's young able-bodied men who are throwing the Molotov Zoar or the bricks or whatever so that's a kind of exclusionary approach if you will but but it was interesting what you said one other question we have from Neda Saudi who says it seems a critical factor for your movement success is long-standing networks that predated major actions during the off times how can you evaluate if networks and relationships in civil society are strong enough to cease windows of opportunities once they open that's a really good question somebody want to take that one so I'm happy to offer a couple of thoughts on the the pre existing networks question just from the sort of general perspective and then I'd love to hear I mean I'd love to hear from sort of each of each of the activists and others here about sort of specific movements as well I mean I think this existence of pre-existing networks I mean I agree with the premise of the question the question that in many cases these these are absolutely crucial for maintaining mobilisation that you know in the moment individual like individual large-scale protests based you know may seem entirely spontaneous but there are oftentimes yeah these long-standing listing organizations that can you know that can serve as mobilizing structures that can connect different segments of society in order to in order to lead to these sort of massive moments of mobilisation I think in particular I mean I'd be curious as I was to hear your thoughts you brought up the Soudan Professionals Association beforehand as one of the key factors that linked together different groups in the uprising in Sudan so I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this for this question yeah sure so this is exactly what happened in Sudan that most of it it was all of these groups and interest groups and some of them are professional some of them are interest groups like this who suffers from land grabbing or these who are from underdeveloped areas all of them - like did their own mini movement if you will they had most of the tactics that are doing the picketing doing the mobilisation of their own messaging but they were all scattered in a way what happened during the resolution is all these small groups that already has some experience in the field of mobilizing and already have established Institute B they already have their own integrity they already have paid their dues or whether it being arrested or being subject to torture or whatever so they already gained the trust of their communities they were they came together the bigger umbrella was the Sudanese press special Association which was made up of seven organizations there were mainly white-collar organization like teachers and and and dr. centre case and engineers but also they were rating multiple hats as well whether by geographic Association systems and we're from war zones some of them were affected by other under development like they were like for parts that are have different resources so they they were like Panerai like veterans and what they did is like they brought they became an umbrella and they came with this declaration of freedom and change which was the ministry so if you well for the movement and people started to sign to it and most of the signatories to the kingdom and change declaration we're already people who had their own share of organizing and grassroots movements on the ground so most of the thing is like that the learning or the teaching of tactics of nonviolent resistance was very minimal what happened it was for the SBA is to streamline this massive effort from components and sectors of the society into one channel and make it like go in one stream together but I feel like had not been already worked and had their own experiences in mobilizing and and and nonviolent resistance already even if they don't know it and as I don't call it that it would have been much slower process for the movement to move and because people were ready they knew what a perfect means they knew what it means to do messaging is a new hospice secret they knew how to respond to counter messages they already had their share and I think because again this did not start with the facility that had started way long before that and it was incremental and it became and we have two ways of a popular purchase in Sudan already 2013 2016 so already people had these tactics has been ingrained in their psyche and people were like already ready so it was there all along it just needed an activation and the catalyst was the move the protest the worsening of the economic situation and then you have this leadership already of people that you know and trust you then already within different battles with the government are telling you where to go so and I attribute a lot of the success for this little bit further existing old interest group grassroots group specifically who were already doing their own battle is that they were doing their own effort and then when the time came they were ready to join and amplify and bail out and I might add something to hang on guys just went so a colleague of mine who was watching the Facebook video before just sent me an email and said that the video has stopped I'm not able to see it on Facebook either so I think we may not a parody it's good recording though it is still recording okay great let's keep talking back III can see the the Facebook live video but let's keep on talking and I was I was going to say that trying to answer that this question which is related to the evaluation of networks and and how strong the relationship are to seize opportunities and I in my opinion it's more a bet than a real valuation especially where when you are in the heat of the moment itself but what helped us in 2011 in Tunisia and even after that in different protest sensitive during sensitive times is to see public figures to see personally and personalities who never took positions before whether it was against the dictatorship of or in other protests see these people go in the streets and and support the movement or gave the message to the public opinion to go industries that it might not be safe but this is the moment to go there so you could have you could see in 2011 judges would face severe oppression if the dictatorship had lasted after 2011 sometimes I remember in two or three protests we on our way to downtown Tunis we faced police blockades and some of the policemen just made fuse on the side of the street to allow people to go beyond the blockage so it wasn't there were no direct communication become between the protesters and the police but I mean this gives you a sign that the word is spreading that the opinions are in accordance with each other whether it's between the protesters always the police officers and and again I think it's more better than a real assessment of the situation Johnson or Yvonne or Victoria do you have any thoughts on this this question so if I can you know say that you know the we used to have like this funny saying back in the day it will say that you know for success we need just three things and that's organization organization and organization so so in a sense these kind of networks that are kind of already existing are important because they reflect the horizontal nature of the movement it's not one organization it's actually like some sort of a mycelium that is happening under the ground if you use the earth like a fungi and fungi as a so this is you know networks of of organizations that are kind of growing underground and when the rain falls then the mushrooms pop up so the the mobilization is the result of of of of that effort and if you look at those regimes who are very very adamant at preventing their social movements from popping up what are they doing they're actually trying to limit the work of all these networks and existing organizations beat youth organizations professional organizations look at Russia and what what Putin has been doing look at other countries where they are preventing people from self-organizing because they understand that self-organizing will one day be the springboard for for kind of potential mobilization yeah yeah on the on the organization point back to you does it well so there's a comparison between the 2014 a brand this man at the protest movement is occurring right now back to 2014 you know the protest war was led by a network of organizations and they were advocating non-violence he and this is one of the reasons why the indie in the movement as five years ago a lot of people were forming a pack a team and they were asking people not to escalate a user force but that was when things are started to flip that a lot of leading organization in the umbrella number movement they were challenged by activist and organizer who emerge so I think one of the challenge to transition no way or a transitional social movement organization in this century is most of the movement now a day are very decentralized it and the first hole of participating or organizing social movement is also nowhere because you know people have more techniques in doing so like on my campus sayings you know and also it's really easy to connect people right now think the same way as you do so how does transitional chooser movement organization do with this kind of challenge will be a subject that I need to think more about and build it on this new ways of social movement mobilization it will also post new challenge to the disciplines of protest because now you have people who are very diverse they are from differences the background they may have a different perceptions of what is permissible and what is not and often time we will need more resources or time to deliberate and also to build consensus among the movement we don't have very much time left but I just wanted to allow and encourage our panelists to offer a final minute or so of reflection as we wrap up our Facebook live event today so Victoria how about we start with you so we just need to just one second Victoria and we're gonna unmute you okay go ahead okay so the the last question before we got cut off was then how do people you know can when they're lying low and things are not in kind of like it just in recess how do you get prepared for when the opportunity opens up and then several speakers said that well yes because they were actually pre-existing networks so I bring that back to Hong Kong is that Hong Kong because for a long time has had the freedom to to get organized and like in in for example in Syria in other places where essentially the whole idea of the regime is to even stifle the kind of ability to get stuff organized and then it is very distinct a feature of the movements now is this leaderless nature I would say that that is a really raw misnomer because you have many many different organizations working together the only problem is that there's no central leadership and then at the same time I will also say that people have taken the lesson that the umbrella movement failed because it was too disciplined in terms of not ever turning to anything not even throwing a piece of rock and also this after listening to the experiences of Tunisia and and Sudan and ethan's and Serbia it kind of seems that Hong Kong people have done a lot of the right things they have extensive grassroot supports they have cross critic cross class alliances they have cross regional cooperation they've done all you know the whole range of non-violent activities by card strikes human chain linen walls in addition and also and also they also have these people organizing into smaller groups to distract and divide the police it's like they've done everything but the same time back to what I was saying earlier that Hong Kong is confronting with a very high capacity regime so that's the challenge and at the same time I think the biggest asset for Hong Kong community miss Owens is this very strong Society so which means they have to go further way forward is to think about organized boycotts is to think about you know other forms of strikes and also forming people already talking about forming this alternative yellow pro-democracy Network and so these things that really should be explored better okay thanks very much Victoria Jonathan just one second Jonathan I got it yeah we only have about two or three minutes left so in the interest of giving sort of the actual activists here time to speak I will I will yield my time to the activists okay firms good Johnson right so it's a long term nonviolent ethics petitioner this movement is really widen my horizon in understanding thousands and also the use of force of protesters so my first key takeaway I will say from this movement is we need more understanding of the capacities of my people choosing my tactics and you know how different tactics can cooperate with each other and also facing such a huge capacities such a the most powerful offer terrorem regimes in history with China well I learned from Sudan or from Serbia experiences is one movement or one moment it might not get us anywhere but a continuous facilitations and high commitment from its population it will be the way forward so which lead us to the discussions of you know how do we build the resilience ease of protesters and how external at a stakeholder is I think the national community can pay close attention to continuous movement because what we are facing now is a lot of people more than 5,800 people are already arrested 40% of them are students many of them are charged with rioting that would get them seemingly 10 years of imprisonment and to this individual the sense of injustice and the sense of unfairness would will probably drain them to to support even you know more violent ways of struggle which is justifying because the injustice that happens on them it is just so a reasonable so how can external Hatter to understand the grievances of the people who are suffering how we lay support in Buell a strong upon that work that can help them to overcome the challenge that they are facing would be something that serves as a legacy to the next wave of protest movement in this movement a lot of people already saying that they're going to form unions like Victoria said we are going to form a pro-democracy network that will support businesses who are also called democracy so this will be the legacy for the future movement and and I think this is the beauty of people's power movement it's not going to stop at one point it's a continuous struggle thank you very much Johnson as as yeah so to take is one person from what I learned observing Sudanese the revolution of Sudan is that remaining grassroots get too far it really takes you far first it makes it sustainable it makes it more persistent and it minimizes the use of force because you have your own people on Ellis trees and people are invested more in it for it to win and it's easier for you to have people and join you and it will be more authentic and more real one lesson learned that it's a little bit of a bittersweet that it came out of this revolution is that when the time came for the political part or faith most of the movements were not ready whether for lack of capacity or because they were not prepared for that there was not enough preparedness or readiness to have the same momentum and the same level or leverage when it came to the political one and this challenge is still happening now are assisting so it would be really interesting to see how movements transformed from active descent into a state building into a little bit tapping into the non necessary institutional ways but also at the same time changing the practice and and and and and and ways in which they are engaged with the at Cochin Court could be representative of the revolution but it's not necessarily addressing all the challenges and the grievances of the people so I feel like this is a little bit of not a place whole purse a but the movement now in Sudan is a little bit feeling of balance because they don't know how to deal with this new government that is supposedly to be represented of the revolution yet it's still not addressing what the movement wanted or most of the major businesses when it comes to accountability and justice and and they're finding that process is not enough they're not having enough stakeholders joining in because those are people who are actually have buy-in in the government more than the reasons of those who are protesting so this is going to be an interesting moment to see how the movement of these interest groups if they gonna do a solidarity if they get a do a big inion if I don't know we're watching it and I'm watching it as well but I feel like this was one of the biggest this back is I don't know if it was their readiness or its circumstances or I don't know I'm just trying to figure it out violence I mean grassroots that's the main thing that's a message ziad oh I completely agree with as I said I think it was a key key factor for the sustainability of a movement to remain as much close to the to its roots and possible the movement in 2011 in Tunisia is mainly or very often considered as being a leaderless movement because we had no face representing the protesters I which one would like to prefer to say that it's an inner full movement because everybody in the street acted and behaved as as a leader when the time imposed that so it helped us even now in 2019 keeping the idea of the soul of the revenue alive in tunisia and with all the bad things that happened after 2011 in tunisia we still there are still many people believing in the core idea of the revolution this is because we kept the movement close to its roots so I completely agree thanks very much the ad Yvonne bring us home yeah so you know kind of to say that you know when we are thinking about or we are the same worried about the repression that we may face we should also remember that the regime is worried as well about that repression and first because it's costly second because it can backfire third because I remember when we actually after Ben OSHA which was brought down and we got to access the internal communication and there was a point where odd port was declared a terrorist organization and despite the fact that we never used violence and there was like this big crackdown thousands of activists were arrested on this a year later when we actually got to see the internal communication we saw what chaos was behind and like everybody was like it was we thought we were facing like this formidable machine that is going to kind of arrest us all and put us down but actually when we saw what was going on behind who was actually a completely different picture it was everybody was trying to save their own little turf and like to kind of shift the blame to somebody else if things go wrong people didn't want to get involved so in a sense when we worried about repression we should know that the the other side is worried about and this gives us hope thanks very much Yvonne well I wanted to thank this remarkable virtual panel of scholars and activists from around the world for offering their perspectives on what is I think a really timely and important topic of what how movements faced repression and wanted to thank you all around the world for tuning in and for asking great questions and making such helpful comments and so on behalf of the Institute I want to thank everyone for joining and wish you all a fantastic morning afternoon or evening thanks very much thank you thank you thank you thank you they stay